“Radio Gals” is the kind of hilarious story likely to have special appeal in Oak Harbor where most people’s lives are affected by the federal government in one way or another.

What if you gave your boss or superior officer a trumpet, taught him a few songs and turned him loose to put a little razzle dazzle in his bureaucratic career?

Bingo. You’re on the same wavelength as Radio Gals.

The story is set in the late 1920s, but you’ll find lots of familiar touchstones. It’s a sort of visual “Prairie Home Companion” jazzed with moonshine and sunshine.

The lively cast at the Whidbey Playhouse will perform the off-Broadway musical through June 24, the last production of the season.

The story unfolds this way: Live-wire Hazel Hunt is a music teacher in the Ozarks, who receives a Western Electric 400-watt transmitter for a retirement gift. She decides to start broadcasting from her living room as WGAL, assisted by star pupils from her teaching career she dubs the Hazelnuts.

Recipes, farm news, baseball news, are all fodder for the radio shows. The musical whimsy travels from bluegrass to Broadway.

Revenues to keep the gals solvent derive from selling Hunt’s Horehound Compound, a potent medicine brewed in a still and claimed to cure just about everything.

“Forty cents a bottle and it hits the spot,” they sing in their radio commercials.

One morning the nutty singing and frivolity are interrupted by a federal radio inspector from Herbert Hoover’s Commerce Department, a Mr. O. B. Abbott.

“It’s official business,” O.B. explains. “There are standards and policies to maintain.”

Hazel is in trouble with the feds for “wave jumping.” She switches her broadcasts across the wave band, “gypsies of the air,” to wherever she finds a vacant space. Her shows are heard as far away as New York City and Montreal.

“You can’t put bars on the air,” Hazel tells O.B. when he threatens to lock the station from the air waves.

The gals turn up their charms and talents to try to save their radio station from extinction by giving O.B. his big break into radio.

Radio Gals was written by Mark Hardwick, a Tony award nominee, and by Mike Carver, a musician and off-Broadway performer.

Katherine Sandy O’Brien is directing the Whidbey Playhouse production of Radio Gals. A professional entertainer herself, she knows the Broadway scene first-hand. For a decade or more she was on Broadway and off, and traveled with shows across America. She counts herself lucky.

“I knew every step of the way was glorious. I knew I was lucky,” she said.

Now she shares her talents at a studio in Langley, where she teaches actors dance and movement and performance skills. She also is active in WICA and Whidbey Children’s Theatre.

“Radio Gals is an adorable little show,” she said. “The guys who wrote it obviously had fun doing so.”

Marilyn Pinquoch plays the role of the irrepressible Hazel Hunt. Pinquoch is an Anacortes resident who got hooked on theater and since has played in several musicals.

Gaye Litka plays the love-sick flapper Gladys Fritts. Litka is a playhouse vet who will direct “Over the Tavern” next spring.

Jim Harker plays the hapless O.B. Abbott, who not only has to fight off Gladys Fritts but also uphold the law. He made his debut in 2004 in “Hello Dolly.”

Dulcey White has played numerous roles at Whidbey Playhouse, but it’s a first to be called America, her moniker as the good ol’ radio gal with the big heart and matching smile.

Sue Riney is a woman of many parts, but in Radio Gals she plays Rennabelle, a gal who is proud to sing that she made a sandwich for Herbert Hoover.

The Swindle sisters won rousing applause for their performances in Radio Gals during a rehearsal this week. Multi-talented Robert Sneed and Allen Young sing and dance their hearts out as the eccentric sisters.

The Radio Gals band is made up of Pat Stengel-Felger on the string bass, Jennifer Weaver on piano and Melanya Materne on drums.